Over the weekend I visited one of the pet supplies chain stores. This type doesn't sell many parrots. They had budgerigars, of course, a conure, and some small birds like finches. They had quite the variety of budgerigars though.

Of course I went over to look at them. I'm always curious about the birds being sold whenever I go to a pet store. I didn't have any intention of buying them, but I still think they are cute. When I went over to look at some of the birds, I noticed the set up the store had. It was basically a box formation of caged animals around a small room, through a door to get inside, an employee could access all of the cages. I saw through the cage bars of another bird's cage, some of the budgies were inside the little room. I realized that someone had left the door open from the little room that was used to access the cage and two or three budgies figured out how to get into this little room. They were flighted of course.

I alerted the employees of the store immediately. Having the birds out in that little room is a disaster waiting to happen. If they open the door and the birds fly out of that little room, there will be even more trouble getting them back. There were a vast amount of places those birds can hide if they got out.

A few minutes later I watched one of the employees chasing the budgies inside with a net inside of this little room. She kept missing them and they kept flying away.

Before she even tried to grab them, she diminished her chances of being able to. Not only was the budgie scared of the net that was trying to get it, but it was probably more scared of her presence and her entire body too. The bird probably felt it was being chased by a predator. Instead of grabbing them, wasting time trying to catch them with a net and missing them with the net, she could have tried to simply grab them with her hand or lured them with millet to go where she wanted.

This goes along with the fact that in general all of the animals are greatly mistreated in these types of stores. They are handled by people who are improperly trained to handle animals. They are raised poorly, they are fed an improper diet, they are not properly socialized. Many of them have diseases and I would be very afraid to introduce one of these birds to your own flock, or even handle one of them without washing your hands.

I'm sure those budgies were out of the cage for enough time to get hungry. I'll bet if the employee took the time to lure them, she would have spent just as much time luring as she would have chasing them in a little room with a small handheld net.

"I'm sure those budgies were out of the cage for enough time to get hungry. I'll bet if the employee took the time to lure them, she would have spent just as much time luring as she would have chasing them in a little room with a small handheld net."

Yes, and the employee would have learned a little bit more about the proper way to handle little birds. Catching them in a net is a quick fix and the handler learns nothing from it. If you spend time luring them, you are going to also learn a bit about what they respond to and a bit about their idiosyncracies and tendencies - and in turn, you will become a better and smarter handler.

By the way, the net was a small hand helt net and looked similar to a large sized net that someone might have for their aquarium, maybe a bit larger than a typical aquarium net.

Like this:

The manager or another employee was joking with her that it was "youtube quality" watching her go back and forth chasing the budgies around. I was tempted to tell him off, I sort of mumbled what I thought but not loud enough for him to hear me.

I was so frustrated with the whole situation at this store that I decided to just leave all the merchandise that I intended to buy and left the store.

You know what would be youtube quality is watching the employees chasing each other around the store with a giant net and throwing each other into an overfilled cage that if they manage to escape from, will get only more hurt.

Michael wrote:You know what would be youtube quality is watching the employees chasing each other around the store with a giant net and throwing each other into an overfilled cage that if they manage to escape from, will get only more hurt.

Ok I had to supress a chuckle at the thought of this..

Ah catching birds with nets.I agree it's wrong; however, I don't know if one can entirely fault a pet store employee. Most of these people do this job for the sake of doing a job. They won't necessarily bother learning more than necessary, and since most of these people will be making minimum wage or barely over, I'm not surprised. In a case like this, it is more up to the employer to establish a procedure to be followed and they should make sure staff understands how to proceed properly.

I understand you, however, from a store perspective they should realize that they could be traumatizing the birds for life and turning them off from people. However, what would they care? Budgies are cheap "throw away" birds :/

Michael wrote:I understand you, however, from a store perspective they should realize that they could be traumatizing the birds for life and turning them off from people. However, what would they care? Budgies are cheap "throw away" birds :/

It's not everyone who is into birds and again, not every employee is going to bother doing research and know that they are doing something wrong. However, if the store manager/owner were the ones to put in place a proper procedure, than any employee be made aware and use the proper way.

I agree than someone should realize what damage these stores are doing to the birds by catching them this way; all we can do is try to educate them on the right way.